Ever get to the end of a film, turn to your buddy, and say, "what the hell did we just
watch?"
"In fact, never play this again."
Well, wonder no more, gentle moviegoer!
We're here to give you the scoop on the real meanings behind these complicated movie endings...
The Matrix Revolutions
Our hero in The Matrix franchise, Neo, was the only one with enough power to break the
Matrix and save humanity.
He spent the first two films on an apparent collision course with the near-invincible
artificial intelligence program known as Agent Smith.
But when their cataclysmic fight in the third installment finally arrived, Neo…gave up?
So what happened at the end of The Matrix Revolutions?
Neo lies on the brink of defeat until he realizes he doesn't need to beat Smith at all.
Neo assimilates into the system, and Smith is wiped out while the Matrix reboots.
Say, whaaat?!
"Whoa."
The dedicated fans at The Matrix 101 picked apart the scene to figure out what really
went down, and here's what they discovered: Neo brokered a sort of truce with the machines,
allowing the continued existence of the Matrix "free zone" known as Zion while healing the
corruption in the program personified by Smith.
The Machines also grant every human the chance to be unplugged from The Matrix and live in
the real world or to remain living in their artificial reality.
The essay concludes on a hopeful note:
"This is a world where eradication of the enemy is seen for what it is: a symptom of
the problem, not a solution.
This is a world where the creator and its creation have the potential to live fruitfully
in peace and cooperation."
The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain features three interlocking stories, each set hundreds of
years apart, all about a couple coming to terms with death — and culminates in a wild,
weird ending.
In one timeline, a doctor works to cure the brain tumor of his wife, Izzi.
She's written a book in which a Spanish conquistador searches for the Tree of Life for his queen.
Meanwhile, in the future, a cosmonaut heads for a distant nebula in a biosphere containing
the Tree, interacting with Izzi's spirit along the way.
It all ends in the cosmonaut's fiery death, the Tree's rebirth, and an ending in which
Izzi's spirit hands Tom fruit from the Tree…which he plants in her grave.
Uh, yup.
It's all deeply symbolic, and anyone hoping for a literal explanation out of The Fountain
will be somewhat frustrated.
Aronofsky himself told The Washington Post it's a "Rubik's cube" of a story that's ultimately
really about coming to grips with our own mortality.
He elaborated further in an interview with Ain't it cool news:
"It's a film that's a journey and it's a trip and it's an experience through the meditation
of a lot of these questions.
There are ideas in there that I believe, but I think I wanted to leave it open, so that
anyone can bring their own beliefs to the table, and that it could awaken them, and
people can have a conversation."
So, there you have it.
Your own interpretation is the right one, apparently.
"Whoa."
Interstellar
Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar is pretty cool...but it's also pretty confusing,
particularly in its final act.
Astronaut Joseph Cooper, on a desperate mission to find a new home for humanity, plummets
into a black hole and drifts beyond the event horizon, finding himself inside a tesseract.
There, he can see inside his daughter's bedroom at any point in her life.
He communicates with her through gravity and Morse Code, guiding her to unlock the equation
that helps humanity escape Earth.
By the end, Cooper is discovered floating through space by later members of the human
race he's saved, brought to meet his dying daughter — who's aged at normal speed while
he's been on his intergalactic travels and is thus much "older" than he is.
Huh?
"Boy when it does, and it feels like they can put a blindfold on you, and put you in
a spaceship and take you to Neptune, and you can hop off on the planet, and they better
have the sprockets rolling..."
The whole film rests on the notion that time is a circle and future humans have the ability
to travel within it.
But they only got there by creating this tesseract and helping past people — namely Cooper
and his daughter Murph — finish their work.
It's a total chicken or the egg-style paradox...but just go with it.
And while Cooper was off travelling through the wormholes, little Murphy was living on
the surface of this circle and kicking this whole journey into gear from a science level
until her dad came back to it...like he promised.
The Babadook
Figuring out The Babadook isn't that difficult — provided you keep up with the sudden change
in perspective in the movie's final act.
Much of this indie horror hit looks and feels like a supernatural home invasion picture,
with the creepy Babadook creature tormenting a single mother and her six-year-old son.
But there's more going on beneath the surface.
In the film's closing scenes, the Babadook has possessed the mom and she tries to strangle
her son.
But the boy draws the monster out of her with a tender expression of love … and a knife
to the leg, of course.
"I know you don't love me, The Babadook won't let you, but I love you mum."
The boy's plan works, and the mom sends the Babadook fleeing to the basement, where mom
has stored all mementos of her husband since his death.
That's when we realize the creature wasn't supernatural at all — it was her years of
repressed grief, which had grown so powerful it threatened to destroy the lives of everything
it touched.
In a perfect blend of heartwarming and gross, The Babadook's closing moments show mother
and son gathering a bowl of worms, which he takes into the basement to feed the vanquished
beast.
She'll always carry the monster with her because, after all, you can't get rid of The Babadook.
It Follows
In David Robert Mitchell's film It Follows, a girl named Jay has a seemingly ordinary
hookup.
But soon after, she's horrified to realize she's been infected with a sexually transmitted
ghost.
"Who you gonna call? Someone else."
The ghost takes various human forms, ranging from someone in the victim's memories or a
creepy strangers, that only someone affected with the disease can see.
It constantly walks in the direction of the latest person infected with the "DISEASE"
until it grabs them and kills them.
Then, the ghost starts walking in the direction of the previous person infected and continues
back down the line.
You're only option is to pass it off to someone else, hoping the chain keeps going so that
the ghost never gets to you.
If that sounds ridiculous, well...it kinda is.
But it's the setup for a pretty devilish little film.
Jay learns she can only escape the evil spirit that's trying to kill her by sleeping with
someone else to pass it on.
Ultimately, she and her friends try killing it — with generally unpleasant and ambiguous
results.
After the climactic battle, Jay and her friend Paul have sex…and later, Paul's seen driving
past a group of prostitutes.
In the film's final shot, the duo walk down a street while someone — or something? — follows
behind.
Much of It Follows is open to interpretation, and that's exactly what Mitchell wanted.
As he's said in multiple interviews, he was originally inspired by a nightmare in which
he knew he was being followed, knew he couldn't get away, and knew no one could help him.
As for the ambiguity of that last shot?
Totally intentional.
Mitchell wanted viewers to decide whether it was still following Jay and her pals or
not.
Sleep tight, kids!
2001: A Space Odyssey
There are no shortage of theories about what, exactly, was going on in Stanley Kubrick's
1968 sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Rather than dive too far down that rabbit hole, let's instead offer Kubrick's own assessment
of the ending, in which astronaut Dave Bowman comes into contact with an extraterrestrial
monolith and goes through a bizarre succession of experiences — vast space travel, seeing
himself at different ages, and finally being transformed into a floating space fetus.
Kubrick explained in an interview: "In a timeless state, his life passes from
middle age to senescence to death.
He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns
to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.
That is what happens on the film's simplest level."
But what about the levels that aren't so simple?
Kubrick pointed out that 2001 concerns itself with "elements of philosophy and metaphysics"
that "have nothing to do with the bare plotline."
So whatever his summary tells you about Bowman's fate, you can trust there's more to it—and
that any extra meaning is entirely up to you.
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
He continued:
"The film becomes anything the viewer sees in it.
If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates,
however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded."
Got all that?
Great.
Just meet us down at the bar once you're done stimulating your mythological and religious
yearnings and impulses.
Or whatever.
"D'oh!"
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